CA Unveils New Name and Cloud Products

CA Technologies, which has changed its name from CA Inc., has launched a series of cloud computing products and services at CA World this week in Las Vegas.

Vince Re, senior vice president of CA Technologies' cloud products business unit, said that the company was unveiling three main strategies at the conference:

A new line of cloud-connected management products.

A new CA-sponsored consortium, the Service-Measurement Index, developed through a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University. SMI will give chief information officers a standardized way to compare and contrast products and services, Re said. "We all have to agree to use the same kinds of metrics," he said. SMI, where possible, will be based on existing standards. "For instance, the folks that publish the ISO standard for software -- we'll reuse that work. We're not trying to invent everything from scratch," he said.

Cloud Commons, an online community devoted to cloud computing. Users will be able to access the SMI from this site.

CA sees cloud computing as a very transformational element of IT, Re said. "We don't think of IT as a closed factory anymore," he said. "It's more of a supply chain. It's less about building blocks, more about the glue that holds them together."

At the conference, CA introduced its Cloud-Connected Management Suite, which contains four elements:

CA Cloud Insight, which gives customers a way of assessing their cloud for what applications are in use, as well as any rogue applications that are in use.

CA Cloud Compose, which lets users enable both private and public cloud capabilities.

CA Cloud Optimize, which will help customers make use of the SMI and information from the Cloud Commons Web site.

CA Cloud Orchestrate, which will provide workflow control based on information from Cloud Insight, Cloud Compose, Cloud Optimize and Cloud Commons.

Both CA Cloud Insight and CA Cloud Compose will go on sale at the end of the year; CA Cloud Optimize and CA Cloud Orchestrate will go on sale next year. Cloud Commons is operational now.